All through the course of your day in the ED or the ICU, you are relaying incredibly critical information to others. Word recognition can be obscured by phone lines, ambient noise, and differing accents. The military has dealt with similar issues–it has a solution. For when we need to spell words, use a consistent, standardized phonetic alphabet. So here is the one you should adopt in your department:
Printable Version of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
This goes along perfectly with Cliff Reid's resuscitese post.
Editor-in-Chief, EMCrit.org at EDECMO LLC
An ED Intensivist from NY. No conflicts of interest (coi).
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This is Sierra Hotel! I have used it for years, and wish it were standard. It is a great way to prevent a huge Charlie Foxtrot…
You can even use Chapter 3 of the International Code of Signals to conduct a medical exam and advise treatment entirely in 2-3 letter code groups via radio or signal flag. It isn’t used much in the age of reliable satellite phones but used to be very important to mariners.
Except for ironing, the most useful thing I learned in the army ?
I WISH there was one universal phonetic alphabet. Unfortunately, the cops generally use a completely different one, with fewer than a half dozen being the same. Since the cops are frequently involved in EMS we are pretty much stuck with “their” phonetic alphabet. When talking to dispatch they want to hear cop phonetics. I still prefer the military version, and use out of habit. The dispatchers will generally forgive me. If they don’t then “sierra, tango”. Or, “Sam, Tom”.
Props for the “Archer” joke in the graphic.
for all those folks that have no idea what the Archer reference is: